Sunday, September 14, 2014

Z Nation, Season 1, Episode 1: Puppies and Kittens

I like the opening, flashes of zombies and chaos, the
world falling apart while a voice over tells us that all government has fallen
all is pretty broken and there is no cure – and we’re now 3 years after the
outbreak. Move on to an “Infection Control Laboratory” which sounds nicely
ominous. Soldiers are running through the facilities being chased by running
zombies (definitely scarier than the lurching kind).

To add to these soldier’s fun, they get new orders
relayed by Simon, someone who works at the NSA, telling the soldiers (Hammond
and red shirt) to rescue some people and take them to California, just as soon
as the helicopters there. Which will be soon. Honest.

Hammond leads the other guy to hold the fort and fights his way to where
scientists are conducting some human experiments on prisoners (chief scientist
takes the time to formally explain the law that basically says their consent is
unnecessary and they’re going to be tested on for a zombie cure including
zombie exposure no matter what). The prisoners are, unsurprisingly, not
thrilled about this but being tied down they don’t have much choice. The “cure”
is given to each inmate, one by one – killing each in horrible, gruesome ways.
Which is when Red Shirt can’t hold off the zombies any more and knocks on the
door all zombified (they change quickly) followed by a lot of his rotting
fellows.

Hammond and the doctor run, leaving the last living inmate tied down and
helpless for the zombies. The Doc gets to the roof where the helicopter is
waiting (arranged by Simon who definitely said his name was Simon but the
credits call him “Citizen Z” so we’ll run with that) who delayed to arrange it
– and missed his own evacuation from what looks to be an arctic base. Turns out
to be lucky for him though since the evacuation plane crashes.

All of that was just the prologue – because we’ve now
leaped forwards a year and we’re in New York (the state, not the city).
Everyone is having a beautiful little goodbye ceremony for a sick 65 year old
grandmother, singing songs, saying goodbye – and then everyone leaves just Nana
and Roberta Warren who formally gives her the “8th sacrament”. A
bullet to the brain saying she gives her Mercy; it’s a formal rite and fully
known about and agreed to by Nana.

Warren leaves Nana’s family afterwards (hugging her daughter
as she goes) to join Charles Garnet at the lake where some strangers are
arriving; they plan to talk nice to the strangers – and be ready to shoot them
if necessary. The stranger is Hammond, still following his mission to get to
the medical lab in California with Murphy – the surviving convict who they left
to the zombies. The cure they injected him with apparently worked, he wasn’t
zombiefied.

They take him to their camp where they have a small
settlement – Garnett and Warren are ex-national guard and Warren makes it clear
that the whole “government orders” doesn’t mean much to her with the government
being gone and everything; but they agree to help him get part way after
Hammond stares down a guy who is more concerned about their truck than a zombie
cure.

Up in the arctic base Citizen Z is there, still getting
messages from the bosses asking after Hammond’s team (does it count as a team
when he’s the only one left).

And we cut to a little trading camp where a group of
people have gathered to play with weapons, trade medicine, bullets, meth and
kill a few zombies (all of them seem to be pretty unphased and pretty lethal).
One of them makes a point of recording it and calls killing them “given mercy”.

Back at the lake, the guy who was so concerned about the
truck and his friend find hundreds of zombies floating in the lake – and
they’re not dead. Which is probably why Warren, when she radios the camp, gets
no answer, everyone has been eaten. Warren and Garnet want to go back and check
so Hammond pulls a gun because his mission is so super-duper important. To
prove it, he has Murphy show the multiple wounds – multiple zombie bites – on
his torso; proof that he’s immune to zombieness.

Tense moment made tenser by Doc (with
Addy Carver and Mack Thompson, 3 of the people at the trading camp) calling
Garnet to confirm that the camp has been destroyed. They do see a bus full of
children escape the camp – but they also see a zombie inside. By the time they
get to it all the children have been turned (people turn really really quickly
when bitten). Zombies pour out of the bus and they run – managing to jump in
Warren and Garnet’s truck that arrives at just the right time. In the truck
they realise the camp and all the people in it are dead and they couldn’t even
give them Mercy (which seems to be majorly important to them).

They also learn that Hammond hasn’t actually been in
touch with the rendez-vous he’s heading for in a month. Unsurprisingly when
they arrive they find it empty, except for zombies (classic
zombie-split-in-half-but-still-moving trope). Hammond quickly organises them to
search the building and check for survivors and supplies. Among the wreckage
they find a live baby locked in a car and a living woman, Cassandra, locked in
a cage and surrounded by zombies who is rather aggressive and for some random
reason, scantily dressed.

Lots of arguing and debating what to do follows. Hammond finally agrees to take
the baby to the next safe outpost (I guess he’s drafted everyone else – and I
love his “I hate moral dilemmas” clearly this
show is not interested in complexities). Hammond dishes out orders
because there are zombies coming though there is some push back over Hammond
ordering everyone around.

Lots more ruthless zombie killing fallows (Garnett seems to be quite the
anti-zombie berserker). And the baby turns – zombie baby! Oh dear gods that’s
the worst thing ever and it runs around and has demonic little eyes! It
SKITTERS and HIDES BEHIND THINGS!!! Nope nope nope nope. Despite killing a
whole rookm full of zombies, Warren and Garnett decide to run like hell rather
than face the horrible skittering Chuckie-meets-the-Walking-Dead thing and I do
not blame them. As they gather to leave, Hammond gives Garnett a brief peptalk
on “holding it together” and he goes to kill the zombie baby since they don’t
want to leave it like that (I would leave so damn fast). We then get a ridiculously
long and just plain horrible scene of Hammond hunting the hidey baby – gah,
let’s have some more “nope!” there!

Anyway zombie baby is joined by friends and Hammond got
himself eaten. The gang comes in and slaughters all the zombies which are
chewing on his body.

This leads to more arguing (“I didn’t tell him to get
eaten by a baby!” oh dear gods them dialogue) and really bad dialogue and
terribad acting about what to do and whether to give up on the vaccine instead
of doing the other oh-so-important-stuff they have when they get a convenient
radio contact from Simon. The gang quickly decides Garnett is in charge and he
talks to Simon and gets his orders to go to California – Garenett is kind of
emotional, panicky and really terribly acted. Anyway, they decide to take
Murphy to California and he better obey or Garnett is going to throw down his
radio again – and he did it so badly the first time that we just don’t need to
see that.

As they leave they also run into a sniper who happened to
save Doc earlier. He joins them because…
I have no idea, Doc offers him a lift and he gets on board without
saying anything. Just because.

And Simon – now calling himself Citizen Z – decides to
use all these NSA computers to broadcast as a weird DJ. Because… yeah I think
we’ve established that reasons are optional on this show.

Everyone on this show goes by their surnames. Not sure why, but it’s a thing.
Occasionally switching between them or women called “Warren” doesn’t make it
easier to keep a track of all the characters. But I think while there are a lot
of characters, they’ve quickly made it clear who is relevant (mainly by not
having much characterisation), who is with the group and a rough idea about
them so I’m not actually feeling that overwhelmed as I would generally be by so
many people introduced so quickly – it was decently done and they made them
into a group quickly

I also like how they’ve laid down the setting – not just the zombies but the
people; little things like the trading camp where everyone, no matter how inept
they appeared or how out of place it seemed, was competent and lethal, quick
and ruthless. This is 3 years after the zombie outbreak and it shows in the
survivors – even like realising the kids had been bitten and turning and
running without any hesitation. It’s a pretty different dynamic, I guess.

And there was a zombie baby. A zombie baby. (Which made
no sense though –which kind of brings me to the bad. This zombie baby just
happened without any indication of death then it skitters and hides? Why? Why
would it hide? And why would it be able to move when they actual baby couldn’t?
It kind of emphasises both the good and bad of this show – ridiculous in both a
good and bad way)

Ok and the bad – firstly it’s cheap. The acting isn’t
stellar (which is an understatement), the writing is terrible, the
characterisation and dialogue truly awful. And the make up and effects are
pretty cheap compared to its big competitors. And it’s going to suffer from a
lot of comparisons on that with The Walking
Dead. I’m sure the show runners already hate the comparisons not just
because they don’t come off well but because they’re kind of right, it isn’t
the same show. The Walking Dead is
all about survival and terrible decisions and despair and high emotion. A dead
baby on the Walking Dead is a matter
of utter, indescribable horror, of Carol telling small children to look at the
flowers and us all feeling deeply horrified and in awe of the writing,
directing and acting. On Z Nation we
get zombie Chuckie. When Rick finds a zombie cut in half it’s full of pathos
and sadness, Z Nation just has it
shot.

Z Nation is a
completely different dynamic – the 3 year survivors, the mission; but so far it
lacks the emotional drama (the closest we have is Garnett and he’s really not
selling it to me), the pathos, the pain and horror of the apocalypse and I
wonder how 13 episodes are going to go without that human element to it and if
they can introduce something powerful enough to replace it that will let it
escape the inevitable, and detrimental, comparison to The Walking Dead? Because so far they don’t have that heavy
character drama, but other than zombie squishing they don’t have much else
either

But, then, does it have to compete? Can it not be a show
that is less emotional, less well acted, less well produced, less deep, less
meaningful and less impactful than The
Walking Dead – but, perhaps, be more fun? I have a feeling that’s what
we’re getting here – B-movie junk food – cheap, poorly put together, not very
satisfying or good for us, yet still strangely addictive.

I think I’m going to complain mightily about this show while secretly (and
shamefully) loving it. But can you really make 13 episodes of junk? Really?